a homeschooling blog about Simon, a young mathematician and programmer, and his little sister Neva. Visit https://simontiger.com
In mid-September, Simon spent a couple days learning how to build a Feed Forward Neural Network, together with a friend. It all started after the friend shared a cool business … Continue reading On Machine Learning and Self-Directed Learning
We had so much fun at Simon’s first official cubing competition in Pennsylvania over the weekend! It was a treat in itself to finally attend an event where children are … Continue reading Pretzel Mania 2022 🥨
It never seizes to mesmerize me how Simon sees math. So many times has he solved math problems or proved theorems relying on visual, geometric illustrations instead of bluntly applying … Continue reading Simon Shares his Derivatives Tricks: Visualizing Calculus
This is Simon’s preferred way of learning math and physics: try to work out the formulas independently. This time it’s the collision formulas which he attempts to depict geometrically. You … Continue reading DIY: Derive It Yourself
Combinatorics problems (each one builds on the previous one): If there’s a sequence of tasks you need to do, and you know how many ways there are to do each … Continue reading Some weekend combinatorics
It’s not that easy to make a chaos model. A system where a slight tweak in the initial conditions creates major change down the road and even makes it impossible … Continue reading Chaos with Legos and Shapes
Really enjoying the chapter on Statistics in our bed-time read, Math with bad Drawings by Ben Orlin, who approaches the subject in the most profound and at the same time … Continue reading How to Lie Honestly
At the beginning of each year, I make a very long, ridiculous video (which I like to call a “magnum opus”). Last year it was the 2048 cookies project. This … Continue reading Simon’s Magnum Opus
Last night, using simple logic, Simon proved to me why a two-candidate plurality voting system is better than many others. There’s a theorem called Arrow’s Theorem which says that any … Continue reading Simon contemplating various voting systems
Last week, Simon found this awesome free computer engineering course and textbook, and dove right in. The course teaches how to create: A basic computer A higher-level language A mini … Continue reading From NAND to Tetris
Simon enjoyed the informal interaction during the live session, even though he had been a little critical about the course. He always tunes in better once it gets less formal. … Continue reading A Beautiful Universe by Professor Cumrun Vafa World Science Scholars Live Session
Back in October, Simon got fascinated with this weird system called p-adic numbers (where p stands for “prime”). It’s a system in which you can have numbers going infinitely far … Continue reading P-adic System is used in computers!
Geeks out of the box 